Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation, offers powerful analytical solutions that help businesses drive growth. Teradata solutions include the Teradata warehouse, along with analytical applications for customer relationship management, operations/financial management, business performance management and e-business.
NCR Corporation has developed a tool, the Business Impact Modeling (BIM) system, which provides salespeople with the ability to determine the “impact” that an NCR solution will have upon a prospective customer. The ability to do so rests on using the system to distribute and evaluate “business impact models”, or BIMs—complex mathematical representations of NCR solutions. Numerous BIMs may be created for different NCR solutions for different industries, such as retail, e-business, travel, financial, insurance, manufacturing, etc.
The BIM tool can be utilized by a solution provider to enhance understanding of a customer's key business drivers and challenges, to aid in the preparation for the opportunity assessments or bid reviews, to uncover other solution opportunities, determine solution impact on a customer's bottom line, and to shorten the sales cycle.
Built by business analysts using Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets, BIMs are largely treated as “black boxes” by the system and the sales force. A salesperson simply collects pertinent information about a customer, typically in response to questions included with a selected business impact model, and feeds it into the system. The system inserts the collected information into well-identified cells of a BIM spreadsheet, allows Excel to perform the math, and then retrieves the calculated outputs from other well-identified cells of the BIM spreadsheet.
The BIM system is implemented as a server-based web application, and only the process of collecting answers and presenting results is done on a user's own PC. The remaining steps in the process, e.g., providing input to and pulling outputs from the BIM spreadsheets, are performed on the web server.
As a result, the intellectual property represented by the BIM spreadsheets never leaves NCR's premises, and cannot be compromised. Moreover, since working with a BIM involves interacting with the server, all BIM activity can be monitored at this single point, with an eye toward ensuring that it serves a bona fide sales opportunity. These characteristics provide NCR management with good control over the exposure and use of its intellectual property.
However, the BIM system does not provide the sales force with any ability to work with BIMs unless they are connected to the BIM server. Since some salespeople routinely work in situations where making a connection with the BIM system is impossible or impractical, the benefits that the BIM system can provide may be limited.
To better enable the use of the BIM system among infrequently online salespeople, an extension to the BIM system that allows users to run BIM assessments on their disconnected desktops and laptops has been developed. This system will allow members of the salesforce to make much greater use of the BIM system while off-line, while still taking prudent measures to protect the valuable customer information collected and calculated by the BIM system.